• Question: What percentage of your day do you spend solving technical engineering problems?

    Asked by 434esre22 to Dominic, Maedeh, Matthew, Matt, Monica on 11 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Monica Rozeik

      Monica Rozeik answered on 11 Mar 2016:


      That depends day to day as no two days are the same! Some days that can mean none at all and others all week!

      Today I’m spending about 40% of my day solving a technical problem.

    • Photo: Dominic Eggbeer

      Dominic Eggbeer answered on 11 Mar 2016:


      It depends on the day. Sometimes I spend a lot of time overcoming technical challenges. Those are the more fun days. Sadly (in some ways), my job involves less of that and more trying to develop new projects that other people carry out.

      I also tinker at home using my CAD software and 3D printer to make little devices for around the house or for work. I’ve made things like splits in 3D printed soft material to help stabilise broken limbs. That was technical challenge recently.

    • Photo: Matthew Round

      Matthew Round answered on 14 Mar 2016:


      I think around 80% of my day job is spent on technical issues with another 10% on meetings / admin etc and the other 10% drinking tea.

      Of course its worth remembering that 67% of statistics are completely made up.

    • Photo: Matthew Oldfield

      Matthew Oldfield answered on 14 Mar 2016:


      Hi. That’s interesting. Some days it is about 80% of the day, but on Friday it was one problem after another and I didn’t do any ‘real’ engineering. most days I spend about half the time doing Engineering and half the time doing things that are related to keeping our laboratory running smoothly or trying to write about the work that I’ve done.

      I would prefer to spend about 75% of every day solving technical problems. That was more normal when I was doing my PhD and early in my professional career. Now I have more responsibilities but also more variety – so it’s not all bad.

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